The Anderson intelligencer. [volume] (Anderson Court House, S.C.) 1860-1914, 1887-09-15
THE COLORED TROOPS AGAIN.
A Sensational Story From Kansas.
From the Topeka State Journal, A,g 90.

THE COLORED TROOPS AGAIN.
A Sensational Story From Kansas.
From the Topeka State Journal, Aug 20.
The meeting Of the colored people to.
morrow night means much more than
the majority of our citizens think. The
promoters of the State Protective League
to be organized at that meeting have
benin correspondence with leading COL
ored men in nearly every Southern State,
and the plans have been laid for the
simultaneous organization of the League
all over the South and also the North.
The purposes of this Leage, which is
to be organized on the same plan as the
Irish National League, are to secure to
the Southern negro the right to vote as
he pleases, and to have the vote counted,
to abolish the laws which now compel
the plantation negro to work at starya-
ton wages and make all his purchases Of
the planter, who outrageously cheats
him, and to abolish all laws which are
made against the negro as a class.
Col. John M. Brown, of the State audi.
tors Office, enjoys the distinction of hav-
ing first laid out the plans of this organi-
zation, which promises to revolutionize
the condition of the Southern colored
people. A reporter visited him this
morning to obtain the full particulars
concerning the League. The first move
to be made by the State Leagues
will be to carry test cases to the Supreme
Court of the United States. The consti.
tutionality of all such laws as the Glenn
bill is to be tested. No single individual
in the South dare bring such suit, but
when it is brought by an organization
there is more probability Of it succeed.
ing. Col. Brown says that the upward
movement of the colored race in their
struggle against oppression is now be.
ginning and will not cease until the
negroes have their full political rights.
"We will proceed peaceably, but if our
legal rights are trampled upon as they
have been in the past, the South will see
another Hayt;. We expect to devote our
lives to This cause, and if half million
people have to die before we get the
rights of freemen, let it be so. The con.
dition of the Southern negro is as bad as
it was in slavery times, worse-for more
negroes are murdered now than then"
Col. Browns account of the FIVE years
he spent in Mississippi shows a condition
of affairs that would have made France
before the revolution paradise com.
pared with it. The colored man is still
dashed, shot, hung and robbed as in the
Kuklux days. The Kuklux may seem
to have disappeared, but it is only
because the negro, overawed by frightful
butcheries of his race, has sunk into q
sullen apathy, combined with an ever
intensifying hatred of his oppressors.
"Twelye hundred thousand Southern
voters have but one representative in
Congress. O'Hara, from North Carroll.
pa, being the only black man who is
permitted to represent his race in that
body. The colored man is as much
intimidated as when the white leaguers
were riding about killing and destroying.
If an unusually bright negro lifts him.
self above bis fellows and shows the
character of leader, a charge of outrag.
ing white woman is made against him
and he is lynched in the twinkling of an
eye. That is what accounts for the fire..
quent occurrence of that kind recorded in
the daily papers. In all my five years.
residence in Mississippi I never knew of
but two actual cases of such outrage in
the whole State. The negroes are not
permitted to form organizations of any
kind, and 1 know as soon as these leagues
begin to start up in the South, the shot
gun and the rope will be brought in to
suppress them, but if they attempt it we
will make the South hell on earth for
them. The negro is not the docile, sub
missive creature he once was. He is a
man burning with the knowledge Of his
wrongs, and with the intelligence and
the physical force to right them"
The meeting to. morrow night at the
Courthouse will be enthusiastic and
largely attended. 1t is, without doubt,
the beginning Of a. movement which will
bring trouble to this country, but a
trouble for which the black race is not to
blame.